


bluebells

by whitesclera



Category: Holostars, Virtual Streamer Animated Characters
Genre: Based on today's morning stream, Blood, Hanahaki Disease
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-13 15:16:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29778108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whitesclera/pseuds/whitesclera
Summary: except it isn't romantic.calling it platonic might be the closest thing to what it is, but ultimately, roberu isn't interested in entertaining the notion of love.
Relationships: Kageyama Shien/Yukoku Roberu
Comments: 4
Kudos: 23





	bluebells

Roberu is bent over his toilet bowl, whole body shuddering with the force of his heaving gasps as he struggled to breathe air back into his lungs, knees skidding against the lines of each tile in an almost bruising slide. 

It might have been half an hour since the retching started. Maybe less, or maybe several more. It's difficult to get a reliable grasp on the flow of time when you're preoccupied with trying not to drown from your own blood, as it turns out.

“Shit,” he pants, eyes burning with reflexive tears. The hint of delicate purple-blue peeking through the swirling crimson pool on porcelain mocks him and burns a line of aggravated incomprehension up his chest, taking with it the strength to laugh this off. He can count on one hand the number of times he’d found himself in this exact same position feeling somewhat marginally better, and for all those instances, he’d never had to throw up _this_ amount of blood. “You’re kidding me.”

Roberu spits and wipes at his mouth, expression twisting at the residual taste. The worst of it seemed to be over. Breathing is still a little difficult but it’s so much better than trying to do it when he’s uncontrollably choking on a torrent of red and petals with no way of knowing when it will end. 

With a strained grunt, he uses his remaining strength to reach over to flush the toilet and carelessly slump down on the floor, blindly grappling with his phone to scroll through his contacts, grip slippery with perspiration. The dull sound of his nails hitting the screen occupies the silence for a long while. His coordination has - unsurprisingly - upped and left him so it takes him a lot longer than he expects, but he does get to the right person eventually. 

_“I think you got the wrong number,"_ a familiar voice intones, exhausted but awake, after two clear rings. _"This isn’t a food delivery service.”_

“No, I definitely got the right number.” Roberu throws an arm over his eyes. He can't remember the last time he didn't dread the prospect of having to initiate a call. He must be setting some personal record. “It’s been a while, sis.”

Her suspicion in the silence is palpable even through the phone.

 _“...Roberu.”_ She pauses uncertainly. _“What happened?”_

“’What happened’, she says. You’re going to hurt my feelings. Can’t I call just to ask you how you are?”

_“The last time I got you to call, I had to threaten you with a signed documentation of me requesting for a leave of absence so I can visit your place. Don't you remember? You called me twice just to make sure I wouldn't.”_

He laughs and it comes out sounding more exhausted than he'd like. “That’s fair," he says.

 _“So?"_ she huffs. _"Why did you call at this hour?”_

The chill of the bathroom floor against the back of his thighs only vaguely registers as he pulls one knee to his chest. He wants nothing more than to sleep this off. He probably will the moment their call ends. Who knew expelling what feels like half his body mass would be this exhausting?

“I threw up flowers,” he says like he’s discarding a half-hearted joke into the air and nothing more. He definitely sounds the part, with his aborted laughter and lighthearted tone. “If you saw my toilet right now, you’d think I ate a whole vase, ceramic and all. I didn’t know humans had this much blood in them. You probably do, though.” The sight is sickening, he won’t deny. He’s never been good with it. The times he'd gone to donate his blood were vague memories at best, except for that one memorable occasion when the nurse pointed out that his blood had quite literally stopped flowing when the needle went through the bend of his arm.

That prompts him to think that he almost wishes it left through the backdoor. He wouldn’t have to see it that way, and it’d make a far more entertaining story to tell. Shitting bouquets- he’d quit being a virtual streamer to open a flower shop if that was the case. The sheer novelty of the business will spark intrigue in the internet and he'd have customers from all over the world lining in front of his shop to get a few as a souvenir.

His sister’s voice, contrary to his, is hoarse and serious. _“Since when?”_

“Just today.”

 _“Not that, Roberu.”_ He shuts his eyes under the weight of his arm. He had a feeling she'd ask about that.

_“How long ago have you had the other symptoms?”_

He debates on playing stupid - if only to buy himself some time or temporarily escape the situation - but he decides against it as he recalls the sheer number of times he'd cleared his schedule in the morning to recover from a sore throat or a cold. There were far too many for him to feign ignorance. Thinking of it now, those sporadic fevers that hit during random hours of the day didn't bid well for him right from the very beginning, too.

“...A few months,” he tells her truthfully and he hears a sharp intake of breath. The numbers didn't look good, in retrospect. “I figured it wasn't too serious since they never lasted for longer than a few days, so I held off consulting with a doctor. I didn't think it would be because of something like this. _You_ wouldn’t, either. I mean, no matter how you look at it, isn’t it weird? I'm the last person I know on earth who could possibly contract it.”

Her laughter is a little like his but it falls painfully short, abrupt and rough at the edges, and Roberu understands why. It has to be difficult for her to project the same amount of humor into their conversation when he has just admitted to having something that could very easily kill him. 

_“Well, it's true that you’ve never had a romantic bone in your body."_

“I’m _perfectly_ capable of being romantic."

 _“If we’re talking about fictional characters, sure. But towards a real person?”_ His sister’s tone changes drastically. _“You never liked the idea of committing to_ anyone."

(It's an old argument, but he still hears the unsaid, _isn't that why you left home as soon as you could?_

He pretends not to hear it, just as she pretends to never having implied it.)

 _"You always told us that you don’t see it happening- that people didn’t interest you that way.”_ She sounds almost afraid for him. _“Roberu, has that changed?”_

_Has that changed? Have you fallen in love with someone?_

Roberu tightens his grip on his phone.

He's nearly thirty now, and whenever the topic of marriage comes up, he always gives them the same answer. He's interested in people - their eccentricities, their insecurities, whatever fueled their individualism or made them interesting - but it's _not the same_ when it comes to just one person.

He just... doesn't think he can love a person like that. Even if he loves the idea of being around people or being the center of their attention, it's inherently _different_ to start thinking he wants to get romantically involved with someone.

As far as Roberu knows, even if people pitied him for it, he isn't in love. He has never been in love. He would know, wouldn't he? There's no one out there who knows him better than he knows himself. 

“No,” he says after a while, “it hasn’t.”

His sister's voice is resigned when she speaks again. 

_"Do you know who it is? The person that- you don't love but have feelings for. God, why couldn't you be normal for once? This is the first time I've heard of a case like this."_

Roberu grins. "I think I might."

_"Knowing you, you have no intention of telling them."_

"Yeah."

_"And the reason you called... it wasn't just to tell me, was it?"_

He flexes his hand. "Yeah," he says again. He already made the decision the moment he realized what he was looking at when the first petal fell from his lips.

With a raspy voice that grated on his abused throat, he says, "I called to schedule an appointment."

_"Are you sure? Don't you want to tell them about it at least?"_

"Tell him what?" Roberu asks blandly, not caring much that he'd slipped. "There's no point. I'm getting it removed, no matter what."

Her laughter is genuine but wry. _"How harsh."_

"It's called being practical."

 _"It's a_ waste, _Roberu_ _. What if he feels the same way? What if this isn't as one-sided as you think?"_

He laughs at that, an ugly sound that makes his chest squeeze and ache. This isn't a love story, or some fictional plot concocted for helpless romantics. This is reality.

"There's no way," he says, quietly, honestly, "there isn't a chance in hell that he does."


End file.
